Invent Your Own Board Game With These DIY Kits

BY Anna Green

February 8, 2016

istock

Tired of your old board games? Now you can design your own with a series of DIY kits from custom game company Board Game Design & Manufacturing. Though the company specializes in developing custom games for corporations and educational institutions, they also sell “Inventors Kits,” which let anyone create their own games.

The company offers two DIY kits: The basic “Junior” edition comes with traditional game pieces, dice, paper money, and a blank game board. The “Advanced” kit is more elaborate and includes traditional game materials, plus several sizes of sand timers, bingo chips, a spinner board, and a wide variety of multi-sided dice. Both versions include only one set of instructions: how to assemble the game box, according to Wink Fun. Beyond that, inventors are free to let their imaginations run wild. And, in case that’s not enough, the site also sells a la carte game pieces, so game inventors can mix and match their own materials.

The kits are perfect for aspiring game designers (ages 6 and up) or those who want to develop alternate versions of their favorite games. Check out the Board Game Design & Manufacturing website for photos and more information.

In 2017, a juggler named Alex Barron broke a record when he tossed 14 balls into the air and caught them each once. The feat is fascinating to watch, and it becomes even more impressive once you understand the physics behind it.

As WIRED explains in a new video, juggling any more than 14 balls at once may be physically impossible. Researchers who study the limits of juggling have found that the success of a performance relies on a number of different components. Speed, a.k.a. the juggler's capacity to move their hands in time to catch each ball as it lands, is a big one, but it's not the most important factor.

What really determines how many balls one person can juggle is their accuracy. An accurate juggler knows how to keep their balls from colliding in midair and make them land within arm's reach. If they can't pull that off, their act falls apart in seconds.

Breaking a juggling world record isn't the same as breaking a record for sprinting or shot put. With each new ball that's added to the routine, jugglers need to toss higher and move their hands faster, which means their throws need to be significantly more accurate than what's needed with just one ball fewer. And skill and hours of practice aren't always enough; according to expert jugglers, the current world records were likely made possible by a decent amount of luck.

For a closer look at the physics of juggling, check out the video below.

Scrabble aficionados and wordsmiths around the world will soon have some new reading material to bone up on. In celebration of National Scrabble Day today, the makers of the classic word game announced that 300 new words will be added to Scrabble’s official dictionary.

The new words will be published in the sixth edition of Merriam-Webster’s The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, which will be released this fall, according to Mashable.

Here are just a few of the new additions:

Emoji (noun): A small computer symbol used to express emotionEw (interjection): Used to express disgustFacepalm (verb): To cover the face with the handMacaron (noun): A cookie with filling in the middlePuggle (noun): A kind of dogSriracha (noun): A spicy pepper sauce

Some players of the 70-year-old game may be surprised to learn that “ew” isn’t already a word, especially considering that Scrabble recognizes more than 100 two-letter words, including “hm” (another expression), “ai” (a three-toed sloth), and “za” (slang for pizza). If played strategically and placed on a triple word square, “ew” can land you 15 points—not bad for two measly letters.

New Scrabble words must meet a few criteria before they’re added to the official dictionary. They must be two to eight letters long and already in a standard dictionary. Abbreviations, capitalized words, and words with hyphens or apostrophes are immediately ruled out.

Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster, told Entertainment Weekly, “For a living language, the only constant is change. New dictionary entries reflect our language and our culture, including rich sources of new words such as communication technology and food terms from foreign languages.”

The last edition of the Scrabble dictionary came out in 2014 and included 5000 new words, such as "selfie," "hashtag," "geocache," and "quinzhee."